We did “King of the Ring” tonight in tae kwon do. The school
is hosting a tournament on May 19th, so we’ve been prepping for
that. In tournaments, if there is a tied score during a sparring round, they go
to ‘sudden death’…where the first point scored wins. King of the Ring is a game
to practice ‘sudden death’ skills. Two students go to the center of the ring,
bow, shake hands, and step apart. The instructor says, ‘ready…go’. The first
person to score a solid body or head kick stays in the ring. The loser leaves the
ring, and the next contender enters the ring. The goal is to be the last person
in the ring.
I had been paired with a yellow belt for sparring drills to
help her with her drills, so the two of us got called up first. Which I think
was unfair to the yellow belt, because usually we progress in size and belt
order. But the yellow belt was the tallest female in the class, so we looked
evenly matched size wise. I pretty easily scored a point. The female green belt
came in, and she is never a very aggressive sparring partner, so I pretty
easily scored against her. She seemed happy to leave the ring. The female blue
belt came in, and was much more aggressive than I’ve ever seen her. That wound
up being a pretty good match and we exchanged several kicks without scoring a
body point. Eventually, I got the point, and she went out.
That was all the female students, so the next person to come
into the ring with me was an MMA student who was cross training in tae kwon do.
He’s in his twenties, 5’11”, two hundred some pounds, boxer. But, in King of
the Ring, only kicks score points, and his kicks are what he’s in tkd to work
on. Since he couldn’t punch me, I stood a chance. Plus, I could tell he was
trying to kick me to score a point, but without putting his full force into his
kick so that he didn’t hurt me. A fact which I really appreciated, since if he
did land a full force kick on my little self, he would have laid me out.
We threw kicks back and forth, but I couldn’t land a kick on
his body; he kept blocking. And since he was trying to pull the force of his
kicks, they were just slow enough that I could evade them. Finally, I noticed
that because of his boxing training, he always kept his hands high, up near his
face. I thought I could get a quick front snap kick in under his elbows to his
low gut. So, I threw a fast snap kick in low….at the same time that he stepped
forward….and my kick landed several inches lower than its intended target.
Several *significant* inches lower.
Later, when he could talk again, he said it was the first
time he had ever forgotten to wear certain protective equipment. I bet it will
be the last time he forgets. I never saw such a large man go down so quickly.
He went down and he stayed down. He spit out his mouth guard so that he could
breathe. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to stagger across the gym and
collapse again against the far wall.
I went out of the ring on a disqualification.
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